I don’t think it’s the best theme tbh

first distro was Linux Mint as far as I remember, but the first distro after I actually learned why linux is good was ZorinOS

the only objective problem mint has is that it’s so good I struggle to get people I convinced to install it to be interested in other distros and stuff. And that’s fine.

Mint is a solid choice and the one I recommend to anyone who just wants something that works or doesn’t care about having several choices, and even when someone wants to explore more options I always include Mint. It just works, it’s easy to install that even my non-tech savvy mother on a phone call with me managed to install it and Cinnamon has just enough customization options ootb to make it yours without being overwhelming to a noob like KDE.

I personally don’t use it cause I am not the biggest fan of using GUIs, debian derivatives and I prefer KDE plasma so I just go with other options (currently Fedora 40, been using Arch and NixOS a lot before this), however even in my case I could most likely turn LM into what I want with some effort (I just don’t see the point in doing that), and my father who has been using Linux since Kernel 1.0 and is definitely a power user swears by it.

I think the best course would be to tell him something along the lines of “I’m sorry these games didn’t work out well for you and the experience didn’t turn out to be good for you, there’s still the option to dual-boot or try a different distro if you want but I understand if you don’t. Just know that these issues aren’t specifically because of Linux but rather poor support from the game’s devs, or more likely their publishers, games (about 90% of them) work fine through steam or Lutris unless the devs implement anti-cheats without linux compatibility so hopefully in the future if you happen to play more steam games you’d consider giving Linux another chance.” nonetheless I’d still say he should go on windows, find out that his games will likely still run like shit on there on his own and if he complains about it maybe bring up Linux again, gently and appropriately of course.

I memorized tar -cavf file.tar.bz2 directory/* and tar -xavf file.tar.bz2

I don’t have that bug (KDE 6)

yes the welsh and all other brits should stfu

I’m sure you can have a good experience on it just like you can have a good experience on Windows, etc. But first of all if we are recommending stuff then either Arch & derivates shouldn’t be recommended at all if it’s a newbie or one should recommend straight up Arch (if it’s not a newbie and needs Arch) and frankly if you want Arch made easy either going to OpenSUSE tumbleweed if the issue is stability or EndeavourOS/Arco if it’s the installation will probably net someone a better experience, so what’s the point of Manjaro anyways, and secondly none of that invalidates the bad practices by the manjaro team

I mean I don’t use nor ever plan on using BSD systems and disagree with their philosophy quite a bit but I think them dying is overall bad for the open source community.

Windows is non-consensualBSD

please for the love of god do not use Manjaro and if you do forget about using the AUR, Manjaro claims to be more stable by waiting 1 week before adding Arch’s packages to their repo, this breaks the AUR packages you use which may need newer dependencies. They also often forgot to renew the security certificates of their website.

Arco is better but frankly all being Arch distros the differences are close to none.

I do use my OS but I also like to play with it, that’s one beauty of Linux: you can set it up and forget about it till the end of times or you can spend days tinkering with it if it provides you joy.

Thanks for letting me know this exists

I heard of Slackware, it never really convinced me personally but it seems cool and is the oldest one.

I don’t intend to be a developer. I do code a few things sometimes but that’s not the life path I’m oriented towards. That said you bring some good points. I am starting to believe NixOS may not be suitable for my uses sometimes, tho I did fix the SDDM issue, even though it involved changing my configuration in a way I didn’t find intuitive. I’m still evaluating what to do. Maybe is 24.05 proves to fix my issues and stays out of my way I’ll stay.

I should try matrix tbf yeah, just didn’t like having to use yet another platform that’s why I went to what I already have to use.

I’m not saying you’re wrong, you convinced me to try Fedora on a VM. And obviously there’s worse than RH, tho it is owned by IBM. All I’m saying is that since the fedora team is financially dependent on RH that is worrying to me. So is the Linux Foundation being dependent on corpos don’t get me wrong tho at least in this case it’smore than 1 corporation. I have nothing against people who don’t mind and still use fedora mind you, I just try to avoid/minimize corporations for what is reasonably possible.

Also just to be clear: I don’t think there’s an obvious incentive for RH to pull the plug on Fedora either, but I don’t trust them to not do something that is apparently stupid to us. For example, I thought Canonical adding ads and doing questionable stuff would be damaging to them too yet I see they’re doing it/trying to despite it being clearly a bad idea given who the main customers for Ubuntu are.

I heard of it, I don’t think it’s for me I don’t wanna have to deal with drivers and firmware stuff. I know nothing about lisp

my issues with debian are beyond just the outdated packages, I know of debian testing and sid I just don’t like some approaches debian has which are not for me. nothign against Debian tho it’s just not for me

I mean, after reading all your comments my position on Fedora has moderated, but in a comment you said they are financially dependent on RH. Now sure, right now RH doesn’t stand to gain from taking/screwing over Fedora and right now they don’t seem to want to but who’s to say one day they won’t try to? I don’t trust corporations for many reasons so having a distro that, while independent in the development decisions, is financially dependent on a corporation doesn’t sit too right for me. Sure maybe they will never do it but hey I’d rather avoid the off-chance it happens if there’s alternatives.

I will check it out in a VM alongside the others though.

You bring on some interesting points and I will definitely read your comments. Thank you.